Beast and Shadow
by Kagura no baka
Summary: They weren't two separate youkai, not really. [Juuroumaru-drabble, one-shot]


Well, I was going to have it deal through their lives, but... eh, read and find out. Made for a friend's C2 by the same name.

**Beast And Shadow**

Kagura no baka

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_**Unity**_

They weren't two separate _youkai_, not really. Matching in face, hair, and purpose, they were both alike in birth and status... Fourth and Fifth sons tend to be looked upon that way. And they were twins. Twin boy and girl were said to be reincarnated lovers.

What of twin boys? He and his brother were like lovers, in a sense- born to be together, to walk together... not two bodies, not really, but one, with two layers. Like lovers, one complimented the other's attributes. Or compensated for the other's flaws.

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_**Obedience**_

Birth was always a sticky matter. Asexual birth, from a jar of bubbling muscle and tissue, was even messier. His brother had left the safety of that pot first, to attack. Kageroumaru had always been the more bloodthirsty.

On that first night of life, the worm drew the dead man's body to his twin's and they devoured the human. That was when Kageroumaru first developed the taste for liver. That was when they first felt pain. That was when Juuroumaru learned the word, 'obey'. That was when he first began to hate.

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_**Likeness**_

The twins weren't completely identical. They couldn't be, for one to fit so nicely within the other. One had to be small- that was Kageroumaru, he was small, insect-like, with pincers over claws and a worm's tail for a body. His face was compact with malice, and his eyes seemed darker than Juuroumaru's.

And Juuroumaru was beautiful. A small mouth hiding pearly white fangs, dazed unfocused eyes, sloping shoulders and a crippled walk, he epitomized the mindless chaos their _otou-san_ so thrived upon. He was a broken beast, tamed to Naraku's- no, Kageroumaru's whim. He hated that.

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_**Subdued**_

Kageroumaru did all the talking. The repercussions of letting one hide another in his abdomen, passing through the mouth, was that one's throat eventually is damaged in the process. Even for a youkai. Especially for a youkai. Juuroumaru's throat healed wrong.

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_**Loneliness**_

Juuroumaru's favorite sibling had been Kanna. Kanna didn't speak much, and thus, didn't ignore him. Better, she never spoke to him in a darkly condescending tone. Like Naraku. When the _hanyou_ did talk to his latest pet project.

Kagura talked to her brothers, oh she talked! She spoke to Kageroumaru, and they conspired, they laughed, they argued over which way was best to kill their creator. Juuroumaru could never join in, never respond to a question but for a nod or shake of his head. And they never tried to include him, never attempted, because they knew he couldn't, and his feelings never mattered.

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_**Disarray**_

They should've died together. One _youkai._ The silver-and-red hanyou's strike was obviously meant to take them both out. To buy time, in a sense, holding off that final battle that always seemed on the horizon for their mismatched little group. Because as long as his detachments failed, said their fallible logic, he would send more and not come himself. Because they weren't ready. Not ready, never ready.

Didn't they know that at their weakest time Naraku would remove them, and not a minute before? The dark _hanyou _would simply bide his time, dispatch child after child, prodding, poking, **testing** out their defenses, learning their weaknesses.

Yet, broken, broken like he always was, as he had been since the day he was born with a different back, Juuroumaru stood upon the ruined soil. Kageroumaru had absorbed most of the incomplete_ Kaze no Kizu._ and now Juuroumaru still lived.

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**Love**

The love of a brother, not like a lover or a friend, but a brother was Kageroumaru's final gift to him. Only gift. The gift of life. To take wherever Juuroumaru's feet took him, with the memory of Kageroumaru.

A gift to himself, in his way, because they truly weren't justtwo _youkai._

Not really.

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Eh heh, I really couldn't let Juu-kun die... Like the fangirls forming that C2. 


End file.
